Tandarts Damme (Dentist) in Jail for assaulting Patients

A respected dentist for ten years, has had a busy practice in Damme for four years now. He’d been discredited for the first time two years ago. A woman then filed the first complaint against her dentist. After her two more ladies followed. They stated that several other women had happened the same. In the meantime, the police already had nine victims of W.D. answered as Tandarts Damme.

Inappropriate touches

The dentist would have abused his position and the patients would have been improperly touched in his consultation room. For example, a woman describes how rubbed her breasts and between her legs while lying in the dental chair. Others would have been touched “in a strange way” again, while the doctor watched their teeth. Last month, his provisional last two victims were interrogated by the police, after which W.D. Friday morning early in his home in the buoys was beaten.

The parquet led the dentist before the examining magistrate and he decided to arrest him. The man will appear a first time before the council chamber in Bruges. He confesses in part that he committed the facts, but remained very vague with the investigators. “I admit that I occasionally passed the letter and did things that do not belong in a dental practice,” stated.

Rare case as Tandarts Damme

The Confederation of Flemish Dentists had no knowledge of this concrete case yet. “We have not been notified”, says chairman Andre Mestrum. “As a professional association, we also have no power to deprive that dentist of his authority. That belongs to the Provincial Medical Commission. They will take a case-by-case examination and the dentist can temporarily take away his authority pending a possible criminal conviction Tandarts Damme.

After that conviction it is examined whether the authority can be returned. That is possible under certain conditions in certain cases. For example, the committee may impose on the dentist that he may never treat female patients alone. But luckily these things are very rare. In the past 50 years I know of three cases. Even though each case is one too many. These kinds of things cause a lot of damage to our profession.”